Whitney Tilson's School Reform Blog

Friday, August 31, 2007

Plan to convert Locke High to a charter school clears hurdle

Some great news for Steve Barr, Green Dot and the long-suffering youth of Locke High School:

The decision on Locke was a clear victory for Steve Barr, the founder of Green Dot Public Schools, which is seeking to take over Locke after an aborted try at Jefferson High School. Barr, who has supported Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's school-intervention efforts, runs a group of small L.A.-area charter schools that have posted higher test scores and graduation rates than nearby public schools. His critics contend that he works with a more select -- or at least more motivated -- student body.

"I'm proud of the board and proud of the parents and the teachers of Locke," said Barr after the vote. "When all is said and done, we're going to work together and make Locke a great school. People around the country are going to come to Watts and see what a great urban turnaround school looks like."

Barr stopped short of saying that the charter approval was all but guaranteed: "It seemed like it."

Rich Alumni Stiff Elite Alma Maters, Give to Needier Colleges

It's great to see that philanthropists are giving to where there's need in education -- including charter schools! -- rather than the least-needy "charities" on the planet (like my alma mater, Harvard), which are increasingly becoming bastions of a privileged elite. Sure, a few of them announce noble programs like Harvard waiving tuition for students from low-income families, but here's the reality: at the 146 most selective colleges, 74% of students are from top-quartile-income households and only 9% are from the bottom half of all U.S. households!

Laurence Lee is the sort of alumnus that the University of Chicago craves, with two degrees from the school and plenty of money that he is looking to give away. But when Chicago solicits Mr. Lee for donations, he says he thinks to himself, "What do they need me for? What difference can I make when they already have billions?"

Instead of contributing much to Chicago, where he earned bachelor's and law degrees, Mr. Lee, who is retired, gave $6.6 million to a school he never attended: Lake Forest College, a small liberal-arts school located in the Chicago suburb where he lives. Its endowment is about $75 million, just over 1% of University of Chicago's $6.1 billion. Mr. Lee says he hasn't totaled the amount he has given to Chicago over the years but describes it as "a modest annual gift for the hell of it."

"My money means a lot more to Lake Forest," he says.

Mr. Lee is among a rising cohort of philanthropists who are eschewing their richly endowed alma maters in favor of schools with meager resources. Turned off by massive endowments at the nation's top schools, they seek to make a greater impact at less-wealthy institutions. They are probably also aware of a fringe benefit: getting your name on a building is a cheaper proposition at schools not accustomed to seven-figure donations.

----------------------------------Rich Alumni Stiff Elite Alma Maters, Give to Needier CollegesPrinceton, Chicago Graduates Donate Millions to Lake Forest; Bargain for Name on a Building By ZACHARY M. SEWARDAugust 28, 2007; Page B1http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118826200944010463.html Laurence Lee is the sort of alumnus that the University of Chicago craves, with two degrees from the school and plenty of money that he is looking to give away. But when Chicago solicits Mr. Lee for donations, he says he thinks to himself, "What do they need me for? What difference can I make when they already have billions?"

August 29, 2007As a Nation Heads Back to School, a Look at the Numbers By SAM ROBERTS <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/sam_roberts/index.html?inline=nyt-per>That tormenting “school bells ring” jingle for Robert Hall clothing stores is no longer around to remind children that their summer vacation is about to end. But nonetheless, school is beginning or already under way for fully one in four American youngsters and adults enrolled in the nation’s more than 95,000 public elementary and secondary schools, 3,200 charter schools and nearly 4,300 degree-granting colleges, as well as for the 1.1 million who are home-schooled.

Welfare critic and American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray and former union organizer and New York Times columnist Richard Rothstein don’t usually have much in common. But one thing on which they agree is that there is little that schools can do to improve educational achievement, particularly for poor and minority students. Both Murray and Rothstein contend that schools face severe constraints that hinder their ability to alter student outcomes. The net effect of their arguments is to provide aid and comfort to those who would resign themselves to the educational status quo and explain away the school system’s shortcomings. -------------------------------------

Welfare critic and American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray and former union organizer and New York Times columnist Richard Rothstein don’t usually have much in common. But one thing on which they agree is that there is little that schools can do to improve educational achievement, particularly for poor and minority students. Both Murray and Rothstein contend that schools face severe constraints that hinder their ability to alter student outcomes. The net effect of their arguments is to provide aid and comfort to those who would resign themselves to the educational status quo and explain away the school system’s shortcomings.

TNTP report on Portland, OR

The New Teacher Project is out with another important study, this time of Portland, OR. One might think that a smaller district might have more sensible teacher hiring, placement and retention policies, but nooooooo -- the utter madness (I call it the Mad Hatter's Tea Party) that characterizes so many school systems in this critical area is alive and well in Portland:

TNTP's analysis concluded that Portland currently operates under staffing rules that hamper the efforts of the district and teachers union to build and maintain the highest quality workforce. Specifically, the analysis illustrates that:

PPS is not competing effectively with peer districts for the best new teachers;

PPS teachers are often forced into positions they do not choose and schools are regularly forced to hire teachers they do not want and who may not be a good fit for the job;

Teachers new to the district are treated as expendable; and

PPS Human Resources faces internal procedural problems that can and should be alleviated in the near term.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Rhee Seeks Authority to Terminate Employees

Rhee is gearing up for her first big fight -- a much needed one!

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is preparing plans to fire up to several hundred employees over the coming year, part of a major restructuring of the school system's central office aimed at streamlining operations, District government sources said.As the initial piece of her strategy, Rhee has begun drafting legislation that would ask the D.C. Council to suspend personnel laws so that the chancellor would have the authority to terminate employees without having to reassign them to other jobs. Rhee also has been meeting with council members to lay the groundwork for their political support, members said.

The chancellor's actions are aimed at taking on the intractable central bureaucracy of the 50,000-student system, blamed for scuttling generations of reforms, said council members who have met with Rhee. During her informal chats with parents, community meetings and a two-day teacher training event last week, Rhee has vowed to create a central administration that is more receptive and responsive when dealing with parents, teachers and principals.

In past years, for example, the central office has allowed thousands of school facility work orders to languish, failed to deliver paychecks to teachers on time and had trouble supplying principals with supplies and equipment.

This is much needed, as this case study from The Center for Education Reform newsletter highlights:

TO TEACH OR NOT TO TEACH?

Public officials making money for not working - how's that for a lesson for our elected officials, parents, and education professionals, not to mention our children? That is the story out of Washington, D.C. this week. The Examiner reports that 68 teachers and staff will be paid nearly $5.4 million dollars due to a flawed teacher contract with seniority provisions that is out of the hands of the new Chancellor - for now. The district's union contract calls for younger teachers to be laid off before those with accrued years of service. But those younger teachers are valuable, according to Rhee, so rather than lay them off, Rhee will keep the senior s staffers on the rolls, but staff positions with the best person for the job, regardless of seniority. Of course, this is just one of the bureaucratic nightmares that the new leadership inherited. In August we brought you information about the power wielded by the textbook man. And in June, the Washington Post wrote a three-part series about reform and the political struggles that accompany that effort. This is not a D.C.-specific problem, it is a BLOB problem, and urban policymakers should take lessons learned from this situation to their own cities - identifying where union protection clauses cost money and have negative impact on children. ----------------------

Rhee Seeks Authority to Terminate EmployeesPlanned Legislation Is Aimed at Reorganizing the D.C. School System's Central Command By David Nakamura Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 29, 2007; A01http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801615.html?sub=AR D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is preparing plans to fire up to several hundred employees over the coming year, part of a major restructuring of the school system's central office aimed at streamlining operations, District government sources said.

Schools Monday: Burning Down the House

It's awesome to see Michelle Rhee hitting the ground running. I've said it before and I'll say it again: many years from now, people will look back on her appointment as one of a handful of major turning points in the effort to reform schools. We've been storming the barricades for years, but very few of us have made it to the inside and gotten the keys to the kingdom...

Excluding gatherings of employees whose paychecks were signed by the schools superintendent, the last time I heard audiences cheering for the chief of the D.C. school system was, um, never. But as Chancellor Michelle Rhee made her way around town in meetings large and small ahead of today's opening of the school year, she is being greeted with enthusiastic applause and actual yelps of encouragement. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it with me own ears.

What are folks cheering about? Rhee has been here for about 15 minutes and obviously hasn't had a chance to make any significant difference in what goes on in the classroom or in the outcomes seen in one of America's most dysfunctional school systems. But she has quickly done three crucial and potentially productive things:

--------------Schools Monday: Burning Down the Househttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/08/schools_monday_burning_down_th.html?nav=rss_blogExcluding gatherings of employees whose paychecks were signed by the schools superintendent, the last time I heard audiences cheering for the chief of the D.C. school system was, um, never. But as Chancellor Michelle Rhee made her way around town in meetings large and small ahead of today's opening of the school year, she is being greeted with enthusiastic applause and actual yelps of encouragement. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it with me own ears.

The Mind Trust: Education Entrepreneur Fellowship

I am writing to you today about The Mind Trust’s Education Entrepreneur Fellowship, which will provide promising education entrepreneurs with an unprecedented opportunity to develop sustainable solutions to the most daunting public education challenges.

In short, the Fellowship is for people who envision entirely new approaches to the challenges of public education, and possess the relentless drive necessary to exploit opportunities to fulfill their visions. Fellows will receive a full-time, competitive salary, benefits, office space, and customized training and support. Fellows will be based at The Mind Trust’s offices in Indianapolis. The term of the Fellowship is two years, with the first fellows beginning their work in late spring 2008. The Mind Trust will begin accepting applications on September 1. The deadline to submit a Statement of Intent, the first step in the application process, is January 15, 2008, and the Full Application is due February 15, 2008. While all fellows must include Indianapolis in the areas served by the ventures they launch, they will by no means be limited to that geography. In fact, we hope and fully expect some fellows to start regional or national enterprises.

The selection process for the Fellowship will be highly competitive. We will consider selecting up to four extraordinary people to join the inaugural cohort. Successful candidates will be relentless problem-solvers with a past record of accomplishment, driven by a commitment to children and a belief that all students can achieve at high levels. Reaching this pool of talent will be crucial to our success, and we would like to ask you to help us spread the word. If you know of anyone who might be interested in the Fellowship, we would appreciate you forwarding them the attached information.

Lean on Me video

Speaking of videos, I recently bought the DVD ($12.99 on Amazon) for both Stand and Deliver, about Jaime Escalate and his acclaimed AP Calculus program at Garfield High School in LA, and Lean on Me, about Joe Clark, the bat-and-bullhorn-wielding principal who turned around one of the worst schools in NJ. I really enjoyed both movies. There's one scene in Lean on Me that really struck me -- so much so that I videoed it and posted the 3-minute segment here: http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1040510. In it, Clark has gathered all of the school's teachers in the gym, tells them that most of the students at the school failed a basic skills test, has them raise both hands up and proceeds to berate them, saying:

“ ...But that is not their failure. I don't blame them. The failure is yours. That's right, yours! How many hours do you spend preparing your lesson plans? How often do you stay after school to give those children -- the ones you know need it -- the extra help that they require? Keep your hands up. Now you are getting a hint of the kind of hopelessness and shame that makes those failing students throw up their hands at the thought of facing the world for which you have not prepared them. You are getting the barest inkling of the despair they feel when left to the mercy of the streets. Keep your hands up high. Now look around at yourselves. Turn and look at yourselves! Because you are failing to educate them, this is the posture that many of our students will wind up in, only they'll be staring down the barrel of a gun!!!"

It's very powerful stuff. While one side of me is uncomfortable with how he speaks to the teachers, the other side of me thinks principals should be doing a lot more of this...

http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/08/teacher-voice-in-data-driven.html We hear a lot these days about what I call "3-D reform," — data-driven decision making and about using tests to improve teaching and learning. Sadly, in this respect, too often, testing has replaced instruction; data has replaced professional judgment; compliance has replaced excellence; and so-called leadership has replaced teacher professionalism.

New Orleans and the Future of American Education

I included one of Randi Weingarten’s Eduwonk postings yesterday. Here is another: New Orleans and the Future of American Education ---------------------- Thursday, August 23, 2007

New Orleans and the Future of American EducationGuest Blogger: Randi Weingartenhttp://www.eduwonk.com/2007/08/new-orleans-and-future-of-american.htmlOpinions here are my own and not necessarily those of the United Federation of Teachers, where I serve as President. In the next week, we will mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The images of widespread destruction and needless suffering and death that flashed across our television screens two years ago remain fresh in our collective memory, if only because they were so stark and terrible. For a moment, the reality of the 'other America,' living in poverty and shut out of the American dream, became real for all Americans. We were shamed by the knowledge that thousands of people, many of them poor or of color, were left for days and days without essential food, water, shelter, medicine and health care as a result of the catastrophic failure of our government. In the wealthiest and most powerful nation of the world, such a failure was a monumental travesty.

Education, Union Officials Take Standoff to Blogosphere

A NY Sun article about Chris Cerf's and Randi Weingarten's blog postings on Eduwonk. I'm not sure I'd call it a "confrontation". It wasn't structured as a debate, though they did cover some of the same topics and -- surprise! -- had different views. Kudos to Andy Rotherham, Chris and Randi for doing this.

The city government and the teachers union are officially in a truce, but that has not stopped a confrontation on the Internet, where the union president and the Department of Education's no. 2 adviser are meeting this week on a national education Web log.

Christopher Cerf , a top deputy to Chancellor Joel Klein, was a "guestblogger" last week and the United Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten is posting this week at Eduwonk.com, the Web site of the co-director of a Washington, D.C., think tank, Andrew Rotherham.

--------------Education, Union Officials Take Standoff to BlogosphereBy ELIZABETH GREEN <http://www.nysun.com/authors/Elizabeth+Green>Staff Reporter of the SunAugust 23, 2007http://www.nysun.com/article/61102The city government and the teachers union are officially in a truce, but that has not stopped a confrontation on the Internet, where the union president and the Department of Education's no. 2 adviser are meeting this week on a national education Web log.

Critics Ignored Record of a Muslim Principal

A NYT article today about the ugly, hateful attacks on this principal and school. That being said, knowing about these enemies and the scrutiny the school was under, what could Almontaser possibly have been thinking when she didn't immediately denounce the intifada t-shirts?

My view on this school (similar to the Utah voucher program) is that I'm not sure it will be a success, but unless I'm certain that something won't work or that there's a high likelihood of harm being done, I'm generally in favor of all types of experimentation to try to figure out what might help improve our schools.

Last Feb. 12, you may recall, New York education officials announced plans to open a minischool in September that would teach half its classes in Arabic and include study of Arab culture. The principal was to be a veteran teacher who was also a Muslim immigrant from Yemen, Debbie Almontaser.

The critical response began pouring in the very next day.

“I hope it burns to the ground just like the towers did with all the students inside including school officials as well,” wrote an unidentified blogger on the Web site Modern Tribalist, a hub of anti-immigrant sentiment. A contributor identified as Dave responded, “Now Muslims will be able to learn how to become terrorists without leaving New York City.”

Not to be outdone, the conservative Web site Political Dishonesty carried this commentary on Feb. 14:

“Just think, instead of jocks, cheerleaders and nerds, there’s going to be the Taliban hanging out on the history hall, Al Qaeda hanging out by the gym, and Palestinians hanging out in the science labs. Hamas and Hezbollah studies will be the prerequisite classes for an Iranian physics. Maybe in gym they’ll learn how to wire their bomb vests and they’ll convert the football field to a terrorist training camp.”

Thus commenced the smear campaign against the Khalil Gibran International Academy and, specifically, Debbie Almontaser. For the next six months, from blogs to talk shows to cable networks to the right-wing press, the hysteria and hatred never ceased. Regrettably, it worked.

Last Feb. 12, you may recall, New York education officials announced plans to open a minischool in September that would teach half its classes in Arabic and include study of Arab culture. The principal was to be a veteran teacher who was also a Muslim immigrant from Yemen, Debbie Almontaser.

Voucher Showdown

Today's WSJ editorializes about the battle brewing in Utah over the statewide voucher program. Here's a previous WSJ editorial with background: http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009624. While I'd prefer to see something more carefully targeted to low-income kids in failing schools, I think this is a worthy experiment.

The Utah legislature passed one of the nation's most far-sighted voucher laws in February, and the state teachers union is calling in the national cavalry to help repeal it in a November 6 referendum.-----------

Blog Attack

I view it as a badge of honor when guys like this go after me with a pack of lies, esp. when I'm linked to someone like Andy Rotherham: He likes Obama and vouchers.

A while back, Alexander Russo asked the question, "Who the hell is Whitney Tilson?" Turns out he's part of a group of four Ownership Society entrepreneurs trying to make a killing in the charter school business. See my post on this here and Elizabeth Green's story in the New York Sun. He's also a player in KIPP, a union hater, and a Democratic (yes, I said Democratic) Party honcho who claims to support Barak Obama.

Not surprisingly, he a favorite of Andy Rotherham, who runs Tilson's pro-voucher commentary on his Eduwonk bog. <http://www.eduwonk.com/>

"Trying to make a killing in the charter school business"?! Yeah, that's right, the charter school business is so profitable that I'm telling all my friends in the hedge fund business that they're in the wrong business. My message: "If you really want to make a lot of money, start a charter school!" LOL!

And I guess anyone who criticizes the behavior of the teachers unions is ipso facto a union hater. HA! I am not a union hater -- though I hate many things that certain unions do.

I love his final line "With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans?". I want Democrats to be so strong in leading the charge on school reform that Republican support isn't necessary -- that's the goal!!!

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Vouchers Can't Help If Black Parents Don't

An AWESOME debate is going on in The St. Petersberg Times over parental choice. Here's John Kirtley's take:

The first is a column by Bill Maxwell, a writer for the St. Pete Times, probably the most influential paper in Florida. Maxwell criticized the growing number of black legislators in Florida who support school choice.

The second item is an ad placed by BAEO in the Times which ran recently. Curtis Stokes, the President of the local chapter of the NAACP, submitted a column in response to Maxwell’s. The Times declined to publish it. BAEO bought an ad and ran the column along with another letter the Times refused to run, written by twin girls who graduated from high school after their mother exercised choice.

This is highly significant. In 1999 the state chapter of the NAACP joined with the teachers’ union in suing to kill the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provided choice to children in underperforming schools.

This ad will reverberate throughout our state—we will make sure of it. I want to thank BAEO for placing the ad and continuing to help us in the fight to bring choice to every low income family in Florida.

When I read garbage like this, I get so mad I can't see straight: "If the failing schools are in the black community, the black community shares essential responsibility for the schools' poor performance." No doubt there's a lot of bad parenting going on in this country and schools aren't responsible for the broken families and communities that make it very hard to educate children, but I draw the line at blame-the-victim bullshit like this. I know too many schools that are taking the toughest kids with the toughest parents from the toughest neighborhoods and sending them to college to accept the endless excuses that failing educators put forth.

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Vouchers can't help if black parents won't

An increasing number of black lawmakers in Florida find themselves strapped with a dilemma: They can continue to support public schools as the academic performance of black children annually falls below that of every other ethnic group, or they can dump public schools in favor of unproven private schools that accept vouchers.

Vouchers are tax dollars used directly or indirectly to pay for students in public schools to attend private schools.

This dilemma arrived in earnest in 1999. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush, who showed contempt for public schools, capitalized on black parents' wariness over their children's abysmal performance in public schools by touting the virtues of private schools and denouncing the problems of public schools.

Many black parents saw their children as victims in a cycle of academic failure caused by the public schools. Anxious and desperate, these parents and black legislators began to believe that public schools were so bad that any alternative was better.

Bush and his allies successfully demonized public schools and implemented a system, using a high-stakes standardized test exclusively, to rate public schools with letter grades from A to F, the ulterior motive being the establishment of a state-funded voucher program.

Initially, the overwhelming majority of black lawmakers opposed vouchers. Seven years later, however, many are changing their minds.

Like all dilemmas, this one has produced wrongheaded thinking. In this instance, the wrongheaded thinking involves the responsibilities of the primary stakeholders - black parents and their children - in the education process per se.

Explaining why he now supports vouchers, state Rep. Terry Fields, a black Democrat from Jacksonville, told the St. Petersburg Times: "In Duval County there are 11 'F' schools, and all 11 of those 'F' schools are in the African-American community. We're in a place in time where we have to be creative and get out of our comfortable boxes and do what's best for the kids."

Fields, along with others of similar mind, can't see the damning irony of his words. If the failing schools are in the black community, the black community shares essential responsibility for the schools' poor performance.

He ignores the fact that the black community and its schools lack social capital, that incalculable trait that motivates parents and other residents to pitch in to make their children's schools conducive to effective learning and academic success. Such people will wash cars, bake cookies, barbecue ribs, fry fish and write checks to help their schools. For their children to attend a fundamental school, they eagerly will sign a contract committing themselves to service and effective parenting.

What were Fields and other black adults doing while those 11 Jacksonville schools were failing? I agree with Fields that the time has come to "be creative" and "do what's best for the kids."

Are vouchers and private schools best for the kids?

Mary Brown, Pinellas School Board chairman, thinks not: "I understand parents' frustration with their children not learning in public schools, but I believe if we want public education to work the way it is supposed to work, two major things must happen: Parents must demand top performance from our schools and top performance from their children. In other words, school systems must make some major changes to meet the needs of 21st century classrooms and engage students in activities that will challenge them. Parents must stop trying to be their children's friends and start being parents and demand appropriate behavior and high expectations for respect and performance in school.

"Vouchers are a promise to parents to help children perform better and increase their learning capabilities. But who determines if the education received is real or is merely perceived to be better? I can't say if the education students receive in schools supported by vouchers is better or not. I simply know if the standards for compliance are not the same, how do we determine if the education received is better? I do know that every dollar taken to support a voucher is a dollar taken from the education of a public school student."

Research indicates that private schools may outperform public schools when they select a critical mass of motivated students with supportive parents. Merely giving vouchers to low-performing students, who lack family support, is nothing more than transferring a culture of failure to a different environment.

To desperate black parents who have accepted the perceived superiority of private schools and vouchers as an article of faith, Mary Brown offers a two-word bit of wisdom: caveat emptor.

Financial crisis looms over public schools

Here's Kirtley on another debate in Florida:

The head of the Florida teachers’ union had the column below published all around the state last week. Below it is a response written by the head of the state free market think tank. I agree with the response—good teachers would make much more in a more free market for K-12! Another purpose of the response was to point out what was missing in the first column—how much do we actually spend?

The head of the union repeats all the messages you'd expect: spend more money hiring more teachers, "focus on learning versus a focus on testing", etc. Gotta give the unions credit for always staying on message (however misleading or wrong that message may be).

As public-school students and teachers go back into the classroom, Florida faces a fiscal crisis. In recent years, political leaders have pushed through an a-la-carte menu of tax cuts totaling more than $20 billion.

Most Floridians never saw any of those tax cuts. Any benefit you received was quickly offset by the burden of paying for public services such as public safety and education - a burden that has been shifted more and more to local government by the Legislature. It's no surprise then that most of our state's citizens continue to feel that the tax burden is overwhelming.

Now the state is experiencing an economic downturn and we are immediately faced with reductions in services at both the state and local levels, with significant potential consequences for public education. Last year, there were about 3.75 million students enrolled throughout Florida's public education system, and it is the responsibility of all Floridians to prepare our young people for the future. At the Florida Education Association (FEA) we take on that responsibility because education is our calling.

FEA believes in the importance of smaller class sizes, with a focus on learning versus a focus on testing.

FEA believes that we must close achievement gaps by moving beyond a conversation toward a vision of what our schools should look like in the future.

FEA believes that we must reduce Florida's high-school dropout rate. Our elected leaders and special interest groups must stop arguing about whether the percentage graduating is 60 percent or 70 percent. . . . In either case we are losing a third of our children and the impacts, both personal and economic, are huge.

FEA believes that we must continue the work to improve the base salaries of all education professionals in a meaningful way that allows Florida to compete on both a regional and national level to recruit and retain the very best people.

Beyond the core issues that we support, FEA must still defend our children and our members against bad public policy. There is no shortage of bad public-policy proposals out there today. Many of them involve the manner in which our schools are funded, and the implementation of these proposals would damage our schools and the futures of our children.

FEA is asking a simple question to our elected leaders: How can you cut the education budget and hold education "harmless" at the same time?

The anticipated budget cuts are going to have an impact throughout the state, in local districts and classrooms. Programs will be cut, school services curtailed, raises on salaries won't meet inflation growth and there will be layoffs in some places. Rather than lawmakers making across-the-board decisions from the Capitol, why not give districts the flexibility to decide how to tweak their own budgets if cuts are needed?

Meanwhile, the Legislature has put a constitutional question on the ballot for Jan. 29 that provides homeowners with the option of taking a higher homestead exemption, which would lead to further revenue problems in the future.

All this comes as public education in Florida is at a crossroads. The state has always under-funded education. When compared to other states, Florida languishes near the bottom in nearly every category related to education funding. In addition, government and the public are asking schools to do more and more.

A new school year is beginning and it's going to be a challenge. And I'm not just talking about the challenges of curriculum, discipline and paperwork. Our state is in the midst of a financial crisis that will undoubtedly have an impact on our public schools. FEA will stand along with all Floridians in fighting for the things that we believe in and against the bad public-policy proposals that threaten the future of our children.

A response to "Vouchers Can't Help If Black Parents Don't"

Given that the traditional civil rights organizations have been largely absent in the fight for genuine school reform (in fact, worse yet, in some cases are leading the charge against school reform), it is indeed a great day when a leader of the NAACP slams Maxwell's nonsense and supports parental choice:

Maxwell wants parents to be engaged. He says “the black community shares essential responsibility for a school’s poor performance.” But you cannot demand engagement and responsibility from parents without giving them pow­er. What if they engage, are active, and their demands for improvement are ignored? What recourse do they have if they are assigned to a school based solely on their address? What if, despite the best efforts of his parents and teach­ers, a school is just not a good fit for a child?

Remember that these programs do not automatically transfer children from public schools to private schools. All they do is give low-income parents the power to make such a decision. If a school is working for their child, the child stays.I am in favor of giving black parents more power.

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Dear Editor,

Times columnist Bill Maxwell published a column on August 16 that stated black lawmakers face a dilemma: support public schools or support school choice programs. There is no dilemma: black leaders can sup­port public education and parental choice. Black families need solutions. Choice programs empower these families to choose the best schools for their children, whether they be public or private.

What Maxwell has right is that the education of black children in Florida is a crisis situation. According to a 2005 study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, only 45% of black children will graduate Florida high schools-and only 38% of black males.

This state of educational emergency has led black leaders in Florida such as Carrie Meek, State Senator Al Lawson and others to rethink their initial objections to empower­ing black parents with choice. This crisis has spurred the creation of groups like The Black Alliance For Educational Options, founded by the former Superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools, which is dedicated to bringing parental choice to black families across the country. On the national stage, black leaders such as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former Congressman Harold Ford, and Philadel­phia Mayoral candidate Dwight Evans loudly and strongly demand choice for black parents.

Maxwell wants parents to be engaged. He says “the black community shares essential responsibility for a school’s poor performance.” But you cannot demand engagement and responsibility from parents without giving them pow­er. What if they engage, are active, and their demands for improvement are ignored? What recourse do they have if they are assigned to a school based solely on their address? What if, despite the best efforts of his parents and teach­ers, a school is just not a good fit for a child?

Remember that these programs do not automatically transfer children from public schools to private schools. All they do is give low-income parents the power to make such a decision. If a school is working for their child, the child stays.I am in favor of giving black parents more power.

This education crisis for black children is so severe and so complex that we need to move beyond blame; we need to move beyond labels. NorthwesternHigh School in Mi­ami, which has 93% black students, is labeled a “F” by the state. Yet they have one of the best choir programs in the country. Graduates of Northwestern go on to HowardUniversity, University of Flori­da, and other colleges. But the school just doesn’t work for all the kids assigned to it. There are some assigned to the school who will drop out-and more than 50% do. They need a different environment, plain and simple.

Not far from Northwestern is MiamiUnionAcademy, a private school that has been around for 70 years. It also is almost 100% black. It graduates 95% of its kids, and 90% go on to college. This doesn’t mean Miami Union is a bet­ter school than Northwestern. It means that it’s a better school for some students — students who would have oth­erwise dropped out.

The average tuition at Miami Union is $4,400 per year. Even though that’s less than half the per pupil operating expenses of the Dade County public schools, it’s way too much for most parents in the neighborhood. That’s why 100 of their 300 kids attend on the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program for low-income children, a program Maxwell presumably would object to.

Maxwell cites a concern for public school funds. How­ever, the biggest drain of funds on the public schools is dropouts! The most optimistic sources say that only 70% of all kids graduate Florida public schools. Every year 200,000 kids enter 9th grade. If we assume they drop out after two years — perhaps optimistic — that means at any time there are 120,000 kids missing from our schools. The state funds our public schools based on how many kids show up-this year at $7,300 per student. That means that dropouts are draining almost $900 million a year from public schools.

We need to be more concerned about children, rather than a system. Maxwell is right when he describes the challenges facing black children in today’s society. The se­verity and complexity of those challenges is why we need a diversity of learning environments for black children. Ex­pecting a “one size fits all” solution to work is unrealistic. I want to empower black parents to choose the best schools for their kids. I trust them to make the right decision, and Maxwell should too.

Sincerely,

Curtis Stokes

President of HillsboroughCounty Chapter of the NAACP

www.baeo.org

This advertisement paid for by the Black Alliance For Educational Options

The Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) is a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization whose mission is to actively support parental choice to empower families and increase quality educational options for Black children.

-----------------------------------

To the Editor:

We recently read, “Vouchers Can’t Help If Black Parents Don’t.” As African-American students who were recipients of Step Up For Students Scholarships for five years, we strongly believe that school choice made it possible for us to graduate from high school. Prior to receiving the scholarships, we both struggled with math and reading in our public school and even failed fifth grade. The scholarship empowered our mother to choose a school that could help us overcome our difficulties.

Although it seemed impossible five years ago, this past June we both graduated from high school. We now have goals for ourselves and look forward to go­ing to college. With school choice and our mother’s commitment to our education, we have been able to build a foundation for a brighter future.

Sincerely,

Arielle and Alliece Spencer

Step Up For Students recipients and 2007 graduates of PACE Private School

Parental choice: It's a catalyst for higher teacher pay

Here's the reply:

We have to find ways to attract and keep great teachers - so how do we find a way to make more of that $140,000 per class reach the teacher? It goes back to the basic rules of economics and the benefits of competition.

One answer is to empower parents with choice in education. Parents know who the best teachers are; in fact, parents fight each year to get their children into those classrooms. If parents controlled the $10,000 assigned to their child, you can bet they would make sure that principals paid what it took to recruit and retain the best teachers. If the principals didn't agree, they could lose their customers. There might even be bidding wars for the best teachers - what a wonderful thing!

I look forward to the day that the FEA understands the power of parental choice and its potential to bring more money to the pockets of good teachers, not school bureaucracies.

-----------------------------

Tallahassee Democrat

Article published Aug 26, 2007

Parental choice: It's a catalyst for higher teacher pay

On Aug 19, the Tallahassee Democrat published a guest column by Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association (FEA) detailing the effects potential cuts in the state budget may have on Florida public education.

Revenues in Florida are dear and may grow more so in the near future. Mr. Ford correctly pointed out that Florida is in an educational crisis, with only two-thirds of students in Florida public schools graduating - and less than half our minority children graduate. However, the amount we spend in our schools may not be entirely to blame - we need to look more closely at how that money is allocated.

I agree with Ford that good teachers are critical - and it is common sense that more money will assist in the recruitment and retention of the best teachers. But our school districts need to look internally at their budget allocations. For example, LeonCounty spends just shy of $10,000 per pupil every year just in operating costs. That figure excludes construction costs and debt service. LeonCounty employs 2,325 teachers to instruct 32,342 students - a 14-to-1 teacher-student ratio. These numbers are all from published material from the district.

If Leon spends $10,000 per child, and the average classroom has 14 kids per class, that means we're spending $140,000 on behalf of those kids somewhere in the district. The average salary for a teacher in Leon is $43,412 - it follows then, that nearly $97,000 is spent per classroom that doesn't enter the teachers' pockets.

We have to find ways to attract and keep great teachers - so how do we find a way to make more of that $140,000 per class reach the teacher? It goes back to the basic rules of economics and the benefits of competition.

One answer is to empower parents with choice in education. Parents know who the best teachers are; in fact, parents fight each year to get their children into those classrooms. If parents controlled the $10,000 assigned to their child, you can bet they would make sure that principals paid what it took to recruit and retain the best teachers. If the principals didn't agree, they could lose their customers. There might even be bidding wars for the best teachers - what a wonderful thing!

I look forward to the day that the FEA understands the power of parental choice and its potential to bring more money to the pockets of good teachers, not school bureaucracies.

Bob McClure is president and CEO of the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee. Contact him at bob@jamesmadison.org.

NCLB: Act II

A summary of the latest on NCLB's renewal:

Rep. George Miller said last month that NCLB "is not fair, not flexible, and is not funded." In response to one question on this PBS Web chat, the chairman of the House education committee lays out three things he wants to change about the law ...

-------------NCLB: Act II<http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/NCLB-ActII/>The latest news on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. David J. Hoff has been reporting on the biggest issues in K-12 education for more than 10 years for Education Week. He primarily reports now on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Miller's Three-Point Plan Rep. George Miller said last month that NCLB "is not fair, not flexible, and is not funded." In response to one question on this PBS Web chat, the chairman of the House education committee lays out three things he wants to change about the law:

A Young Teacher Attends a School of Hard Knocks

“The Education of Ms. Groves,” a documentary that will be shown on the Sundance Channel as a half-hour series tonight through Friday, lays out the journey of this neophyte language-arts teacher as neatly as if it were a sentence to be diagramed.

Ms. Groves, 21, is a volunteer in the Teach for America program, a sort of domestic Peace Corps that sends college graduates into low-income communities to teach for two years. Ms. Groves, a University of Virginia graduate, fears that she is too young, too small and too middle class to be an effective teacher.

She’s right to worry. The first weeks in the classroom at Jean Childs Young Middle School consist mostly of empty words falling on deaf ears.

-------------Television Review | The Education of Ms. GrovesA Young Teacher Attends a School of Hard Knocks By SUSAN STEWART Published: August 28, 2007

When we meet the first-time teacher Monica Groves, she is hanging inspiring words on the walls of her classroom and anticipating her sixth-grade pupils.

“I haven’t met them,” she says, “but I already love them.”

You don’t need even a sixth-grade education to know what that means: Ms. Groves is in for a bumpy ride.

“The Education of Ms. Groves,” a documentary that will be shown on the Sundance Channel as a half-hour series tonight through Friday, lays out the journey of this neophyte language-arts teacher as neatly as if it were a sentence to be diagramed.

She’s right to worry. The first weeks in the classroom at Jean Childs Young Middle School consist mostly of empty words falling on deaf ears.

Ms. Groves lectures, preaches, threatens and scolds her pupils, trying to get them to listen, sit still, stop rolling their eyes (at her) and in general be as orderly as the color-coded sentences with which she fills the blackboard.

The children roll their eyes more. Ms. Groves sounds tedious to them — and to us.

She knows it. “I don’t have it completely together,” she says three weeks in. And later: “I didn’t expect it to feel like such a fight.”

Ms. Groves is lovely, loving and articulate. But there’s no edge to her, a point made when we see the math teacher on her team, an older woman, quickly handle a situation while Ms. Groves agonizes.

Clearly, teachers who work in impoverished areas have to be tough, but not too tough to care about their students. It’s a delicate balance, and a delicate subject, maybe too delicate for the orderly “Education.”

This series does a great job on standard issues like testing, classroom discipline and the way trouble at home affects work at school. The last is explored through three sixth graders who have enough problems for their own documentaries.

Drew, for instance, is being reared by his grandmother, Ophelia. Ophelia, who says she is between 75 and 90, speaks to the camera as if it were an old friend.

“We are true Southerners,” she says, stirring a pot on the stove. “We eat grits every morning.”

On caring for her three grandsons: “It is not what I would choose to do, but it appears that it is what I need to do.” She is a dynamo, far more charismatic than the naïve Ms. Groves.

This documentary, directed by Izhar Harpaz, is a spinoff of a “Dateline: NBC” program that won a Peabody Award last year. In a perfect world Ophelia would get her own spinoff documentary. Or maybe Teach for America could hire her.

Azeke on affirmative action

Here is my friend Robert Azeke's response to the WSJ Op Ed I sent around recently that critiqued affirmative action at law schools:

I am a big fan of the WSJ -- by far the best paper on the planet -- but this affirmative action piece reeks of BS. Affirmative action is not a constitutional right but a temporary attempt to "right" some gross historical injusticies-- slavery, jim crow, etc. I think no one would doubt that there are more black professionals NOW than in the 1950-60-70s and affirmative action clearly contributes to this improvement. I would love for the author to broaden her time horizon a little and analyze black achievement over the years. There is too much statistical babble in her article and not enough common sense.Also, as an affirmative action beneficiary who knows many others, I have never met one who felt "injured" by being thrown into the proverbial deep end. I know many who failed, but many also succeeded. We may not be succeeding at the rate of our white counterparts, but heck, we have only been at this for 30 years at most! Give black America some time -- I think we deserve it! Furthermore, how do we measure the intangible benefits to society of having diversity in higher education? For example, America is clearly warming to the idea of a black president. This is huge!! This would not have been possible in a pre-affirmative action world.Lastly, I would love to see the statistics on "legacy" kids who are admitted to schools because of family connections, donations etc. No one ever analyzes the John F. Kennedy Jr. syndrome or reality -- which is far more common than people think. Many legacy kids take 4-5 attempts to pass the bar or choose not to take it at all. I would argue there are generally more "legacy" kids accepted per class than affirmative action kids.I learned a great deal from my classmates at Harvard, UNC and Milton who were clearly legacy students and I am sure they are learned a great deal from me. It is this unquantifiable element of affirmative action that makes it necessary-- for now at least.

With Turnover High, Schools Fight for Teachers

A good NYT article about the difficulty schools nationwide are having recruiting and retaining qualified teachers, esp. in high-poverty schools. Good to see at least some districts are willing to experiment with financial incentives. It is completely insane that it's not the norm to pay math and science teachers more and pay teachers more for being willing to teach in the toughest schools. But the biggest problem is -- surprise! -- the dysfunctional systems. The New Teacher Project's Tim Daly nails the problem:

Tim Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a group that helps urban districts recruit teachers, said attrition often resulted from chaotic hiring practices, because novice teachers are often assigned at the last moment to positions for which they have not even interviewed. Later, overwhelmed by classroom stress, many leave the field.

Chicago and New York are districts that have invested heavily and worked with teachers unions in recent years to improve hiring and transfer policies, Mr. Daly said.

“But most of the urban districts have no coherent hiring strategy,” he said. Many receive thousands of teacher applications in the spring but leave them unprocessed until principals return from August vacations, when more organized suburban districts have already hired the most-qualified teachers, he said.

“There isn’t any maliciousness in this,” Mr. Daly said, “it’s just a conspiracy of dysfunction.”

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term.

An Astonishing Look At No Child Left Behind

Here's Jay Mathews' review of a new book on NCLB, which I just ordered and am looking forward to reading:

The arguments about No Child Left Behind surround me. Some days I imagine I am hearing them come through the walls. I work in the Post bureau in Alexandria, Va., a riverside city that houses many of the national organizations that focus on public schools. When I visit the main Post newsroom to prove to my editors I am still ambulatory, I am smack in the middle of another concentration of educational organizations in downtown D.C.

Everybody in those buildings is talking, talking, talking NCLB. But these conversations are about politics and testing procedures and assessment standards and state's rights and a lot of other stuff that bores me. Where are the teachers? Where are the kids?

I just found them. They are in a new book by my former Post colleague Linda Perlstein, who has done what all we other education reporters wish we had the time and talent to do. She has spent a year in an elementary school full of disadvantaged children and recorded with astonishingly clarity and insight just what No Child Left Behind is doing to and for those kids and their teachers, with none of the highs or lows, triumphs or failures, smart moves or idiotic pratfalls left out.

This is the best book ever written about No Child Left Behind. It may hold on to that title in perpetuity because we will soon have a new president and, I suspect, a new federal education program. That program may even give itself a new name, since the old name is crusted over with slimy stuff people have been throwing at it.

The book's title is "Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade." You can get it for $16.50 on amazon.com. Perlstein uses her remarkable writing skills, shown to great advantage in her last book, "Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers," to take us inside Tyler Heights Elementary School in Annapolis, Md., an Anne Arundel County school where more than 70 percent of the students qualify for federal lunch subsidies.

-----------------------An Astonishing Look At No Child Left Behind By Jay Mathews Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 31, 2007; 12:10 PMhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073100784.html The arguments about No Child Left Behind surround me. Some days I imagine I am hearing them come through the walls. I work in the Post bureau in Alexandria, Va., a riverside city that houses many of the national organizations that focus on public schools. When I visit the main Post newsroom to prove to my editors I am still ambulatory, I am smack in the middle of another concentration of educational organizations in downtown D.C.